 Description:
This plant fossil comes from a very old collection, some 50 to 60 years old,
the plant fossil collection of a man and wife who combed more
than 100 plant fossil sites, almost all west of the Mississippi
River. No doubt, some of these sites have been subsumed by strip
malls, and urban sprawl, or are otherwise no longer open to collecting.
There was no Internet for these collectors to research their
treasures, so most are unidentified by them. This one is marked
as x214, meaning site 214, which their key says is Union Pass,
Wyoming. I can find no fossil site information associated with
this name. The fossil plants of the Paleocene Fort Union Formation
in Wyoming are on distinctly red matrix, so this one if different.
The site's age, sometime in the Cenozoic, is a mystery, but
the natural beauty speaks for itself.
Note
that their are partial plant leaves on both side, and one on
each side would have been very large (6 " or
thereabouts). The dark fossils on light matrix is quite striking.
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